


Always pickin' at the pieces

by Blake



Category: Cars (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, First Time, Kissing, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sexual Tension, So Much Romance, Takes place after the first movie, doc is 70, gaywakening, lightning is 30, past Sally/Lightning, the period is the 2000s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 14:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18367550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Sometimes, Doc makes Lightning do jigsaw puzzles with him.





	Always pickin' at the pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I would very much like to dedicate this to the CARS FANDOM consisting of a very few delightful, wonderful people who are committed to making this HAPPEN. I love you all!
> 
> This fic took 500 turns I wasn't expecting but here it is. It will probably be the only first-time fic I write for a long time. Thank you for reading!!

Sometimes, Doc makes Lightning do jigsaw puzzles with him. Well, he doesn’t exactly _make_ him. It’s more like he _manipulates_ him into doing it. Lightning will drop by, hoping to get Doc to drive out to the track with him or help him work out or something. Usually, it works. But if he catches Doc halfway through constructing a European castle on his glass coffee table, then Doc just stubbornly ignores him, forcing Lightning to watch in silence until a miracle happens and it suddenly becomes _compelling._

Maybe it’s not a miracle if it happens every time. Lightning just can’t wrap his head around the way Doc puts together a jigsaw puzzle: looking over the pieces in the box until he’s struck by inspiration or something, picking out a single piece that he closely studies through his glasses, and then placing the piece exactly where it fits snugly into the shapes that are already laid down. It’s the opposite of how Lightning does it, when he gets invested-slash-bored enough to take a seat on the old man’s nice black leather couch and try to get the puzzle over with faster. Lightning’s technique is to pick up a random piece and jam each side of it into every available space that looks like it might be remotely the right color. He knows he’s messing up Doc’s strategy, but Doc lets the corner of his mouth ride up into his cheek without bothering to hide it, so Lightning thinks his attempts can’t be _too_ much of a problem.

There’s always this _one green piece_ —or sometimes it’s sky blue, or white, or autumn yellow—that Lightning has tried in what feels like literally every place it could possibly fit. He keeps it in his pile of rejects with the other orphaned pieces that gradually get homes as Doc steadily makes more and more places for the strays to fit in. But there’s always the one piece that just never finds a home, until Lightning starts to go crazy, thinking it must be an extra piece that’s in the box by mistake, because the only empty spaces left are like, the total opposite color and Doc is slowly filling them all.

But then, somehow, Doc leaves one single space empty and nods to it, tells Lightning to “get on with it already,” which is hilarious because Lightning is not the slow one here, not the one who does jigsaw puzzles on a Friday night. Rolling his eyes the first time, but biting his lip by the sixth time it happens, Lightning slides the last piece into the remaining slot that looks like it shouldn’t work at all. And then, suddenly, there’s a spot of green leaves in the middle of a patch of red brick, or a tiny patch of blue in a cloudy-white sky, and the puzzle is complete. It’s like a magic trick, but it’s anticlimactic at the same time, because the end result is just so naturally, undeniably _right_.

Anyways, that’s what it’s like the day Lightning realizes that Doc thinks he’s _attractive_. It’s like this tiny highlight of information that’s been there on the table all along: not quite the color he was expecting, but the difference between an incomplete puzzle and a complete puzzle. The thing that makes you feel like an idiot for not somehow knowing that there was obviously supposed to be a leaf on the brick, a patch of blue in the sky, the thing you can’t un-see even if you take the piece back out.

Lightning _is_ an idiot. He’s caught Doc _looking_ at him dozens of times, probably, and Doc always turns away when Lightning catches him, shakes his head and laughs in what Lightning always figured was a dismissive way.

But for some reason, this one time, it just clicks.

Lightning is in Doc’s kitchen, pouring Doc’s gross Folgers coffee into two of Doc’s matching coffee mugs, grumbling about how it’s already so hot out that they’ll have to wait until evening to go out and train. Lightning’s expecting the usual reprimand that he should be out training with the people who actually get paid to train him, but it doesn’t come. He glances over and sees Doc just… _looking_ at him, looking at his _arm_ , specifically. It’s just an arm, pouring coffee into a cup.

_Overfilling_ a cup, Lightning realizes, righting the carafe and setting it down gently. At the gloopy wet sound of the glass making contact with the coffee-flooded countertop, Doc suddenly turns to look straight out the kitchen window. Lightning can’t tell where the blue of Doc’s eyes ends and where the reflection in them of the cloudless sky begins.

Lightning’s arm tingles. His mouth dries up like he’s drunk a whole pot of coffee. And that rock in his stomach—that’s some kind of _guilt_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t know why. He’s never been good at recognizing his own feelings instead of acting on them. It’s part of why Sally told him they had to keep it casual, like friends, because she was apparently too “old” to have the energy to teach a boy how to be a _boyfriend_. Lightning had been weirdly relieved about it, but he’d assumed it was because it meant he didn’t have to learn how to recognize his own feelings, including “relief that your girlfriend doesn’t really want to be your girlfriend anymore” feelings.

But here Lightning is, feeling guilty because his arm was there for Doc to look at, or because there’s a note of pain in Doc’s eyes he can’t quite make out, or because it’s taken him months to notice that the way Doc looks at him is not the way other people do. Here he is, trying to _figure out why_ he feels guilty, instead of _acting_ on his guilt.

“This what racers do these days, stand around until the coffee goes cold?” Doc asks, shaking his head dismissively—the way he _always does_ when this happens, only Lightning’s never noticed the pattern before. Doc helps himself to the closer mug of coffee without even looking up and walks out of the kitchen, leather shoes slapping quietly across the floor.

Lightning stands there, letting his coffee go cold.

Doc is _gay._

Like, _obviously_ Doc is gay. Lightning has kind of, sort of, in-the-back-of-his-head known that since… well, when he tries to think about it, he can’t remember a time in his entire life of hearing about the Fabulous Hudson Hornet that he would have been _shocked_ by the fact. Lightning has known Doc is gay since before they met, but he also _hasn’t_ , not really. He’s known it in the way that he knows what the sun looks like. You’re not supposed to look at the sun: it’s like a rule that no one ever really has to be taught, it’s instinct. You just… don’t look at the sun, but still, if someone announces, “Hey, the sun is yellow and round,” nobody is surprised.

Lightning takes a sip of his coffee, trying to suck something down to slow down his thoughts. The sun is yellow and round, Doc is gay. That part he can wrap his head around just fine.

The part that’s bugging him, that’s rolling around in his stomach with that guilt-rock and the sip of coffee, is that it’s taken him months of knowing Doc, training in Radiator Springs, and doing jigsaw puzzles to be able to articulate that the sun is yellow and round. He’s been avoiding this fact like it’s his job.

He’s been avoiding the fact that Doc is gay like it’s a _feeling,_ not a fact. The kind of feeling Sally would get frustrated with him for not being able to recognize.

There are so many little things Lightning has avoided, under the assumption that it was instinct, or maybe some sense of professionalism. Tiny things. Like the careful way Doc keeps his nails trimmed and clean, and his hair and mustache, too. That’s just practical, right? He’s a doctor. It would be weird to assume that sanitary measures had anything to do with _sexuality_. Or, the fact that he has nice furniture from a store that’s probably a hundred miles down the interstate, while the rest of the town has old, broken Western-themed stuff from estate sales, except Luigi and Guido, who have _nice_ , old, Italian furniture. Wouldn’t it be stereotyping to assume that everyone who has nice furniture is gay? Or the fact that Doc never talked about having been married. Wasn’t it polite not to pry? Or the fact that Doc came to his first race with the word “fabulous” shamelessly embroidered across the back of his jacket. A word was just a word, right?

Or the fact that Doc was always _looking at him._

Lightning has been looking at the sun this whole time without realizing it. He’s been looking at the sky, and the land, and the water—everything _lit by sunlight_. This whole time, knowing he wasn’t supposed to look at the hot painful glare of light at the corner of his vision, but looking at everything else as though it was untouched by that bright thing, as though that bright thing was tucked away in its own safe container. Take the sun away, and you can’t see anything, not even the moon.

So why has Lightning been jumping through hoops trying to convince himself that Doc’s life, his work, his history, his reclamation of his past, his place in this community, his _racing,_ and the _way he looks at Lightning_ , all exist separately from his sexuality?

Of _course_ they’re all related. Of _course_ it’s less work to let himself see it than it was to not-see it.

The way Doc looks at him is related to the fact that Doc is gay. The skin of Lightning’s arm starts to tingle again. He’s not grossed out; he’s _compelled._ He wonders how long he’s been compelled by the way Doc looks at him without even realizing that it’s happening.

Has Doc known that Lightning didn’t see it? Or has he thought that Lightning was letting him get away with it without comment? Or has it been completely beyond Doc’s control? Most importantly, why do each of these options make Lightning’s gut churn in the good way. The butterflies way. The turned-on way.

Lightning doesn’t know how to recognize that feeling, so he acts on it instead.

He finds Doc in the living room, bent over a new jigsaw puzzle, coffee still steaming on an artsy Southwestern coaster. Lightning watches his own hand reach out and lay flat across the back of Doc’s neck. Then he’s touching, feeling the warm, sun-weathered skin above his collar, the sharp hairs at the base of his skull that he keeps cropped so neat, and the deep intake of breath that expands against Lightning’s palm.

“What, are you gonna kiss me?” Doc asks, unimpressed, leaning away from the touch to put two side pieces together.

Lightning’s pretty sure the question’s supposed to scare him off. It works. He wasn’t going to kiss Doc. At least he’s pretty sure that wasn’t his plan, because the word _kiss_ spoken so gruffly like that makes him flinch and fold his arms across his chest. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. “No,” he admits mildly, not sure what he’s trying to convey besides _I’m trying very hard not to fuck up_. He walks over to sit on the couch across from Doc’s chair, leaning close enough that it’s clear he’s not uncomfortable with the way Doc looks at him, but far enough that it doesn’t seem like he’s _pushing_. He watches Doc put together a whole side of the puzzle’s border, rapid fire.

“I get what I need,” Doc spills out. It would seem uncharacteristically open if he weren’t so zeroed in on the actions of his own hands. “There’s a place down in Phoenix I go sometimes. And there’s a thing called the internet, don’t know if you’ve heard of it.”

It’s hard to read through all the layers of sarcasm, but Lightning’s pretty sure Doc is talking to him about his _sex life_. In a _defensive_ way, an _I don’t need your pity_ way. It weirdly makes Lightning feel almost exactly the way he did when Doc started talking to him about racing for the first time: like he won the jackpot of personal information from a well of private knowledge. Lightning watches the shadow of Doc’s short eyelashes and his crinkling lids as he squints at a puzzle piece and places it down. Then a sudden dilation of his pupil, a panic, almost, when the piece doesn’t snap in where he thought it would.

Without breathing, Lightning reaches out and takes the piece from his fingers. He’s got no idea where it goes, but he’d rather embarrass himself trying it in random places than make Doc suffer the discomfort of being caught off his game. Lightning watches Doc’s breaths stutter and regulate—or is it just his pulse—in the rise and fall of the hollow of his throat, where the skin is aged but still soft-looking. For the first time in _conscious_ memory, Lightning realizes that men kiss that patch of skin, sometimes. The hollow of Doc’s throat is a place to be kissed.

But it’s probably not kissed often. Not nearly often enough. “Nobody to make coffee for you, though,” Lightning comments quietly, hopefully sympathetic. His arm tingles again with the memory of the way Doc looked at him when he poured the coffee, the way he would look at a boyfriend who made him coffee every morning. It just doesn’t seem right that Doc should have to go to the city to have sex, when he’d probably be the best live-in boyfriend any guy could have. He shouldn’t have to settle for city-sex and annoying straight boys following him around all over town. “Nobody to do jigsaw puzzles with.” He’s not sure what he’s doing, but he wants Doc to know that he deserves to have it all and that Lightning supports him having it.

Doc laughs. Or, it’s one exhale, almost a laugh, heavy with dark humor like rotten fruit. He looks at Lightning for the first time in minutes and it pins Lightning into absolute stillness. “I’ve got you for that, haven’t I?”

Lightning can’t move even as Doc’s sharp blue eyes release him and return to the puzzle. He’s overwhelmed with a feeling, and he thinks it’s _pride_. Like, he _likes_ that Doc is content with having him make the coffee. He likes that Doc watching him pour them matching cups of coffee is on par with men from the internet kissing the hollow of his throat in gay bars. He feels like he’s _winning_ , somehow, winning over those other guys—and why doesn’t that freak him out?

He clears his throat, but it does nothing to clear his mind. Or is it that his mind was cleared when he _saw_ Doc looking at him twenty minutes ago? Lightning drops his puzzle piece and picks up a random new one. Maybe he just needs to change the topic and come back to these thoughts after coffee.

He reaches automatically for Doc’s coffee cup before he realizes that might be weird, now. But Doc just blinks behind his glasses, and it seems like permission. The coffee is bitter, but rich, and cool enough to swallow in gulps. He watches Doc’s broad, careful fingers sifting through the box of jigsaw pieces as though seeking out a specific one. “How did you get so magically good at jigsaw puzzles, anyways?” he asks, hearing the raw wonder in his voice spill out and not really caring. At least the coffee doesn’t spill out as he sets it back down on its coaster.

Doc looks at him down the fine slope of his nose, over the top rim of his glasses, studying Lightning like yet another puzzle piece. “It ain’t magic, kid. I’ve done each of these puzzles a hundred times or more.” Doc’s voice is weighed down by self-deprecation, like this information is _unimpressive._ “Live long enough, you remember where everything goes, get to know each piece like a face you remember seeing on the street.”

Lightning’s brain is fried because he thinks Doc is trying to make him less excited but it’s literally _turning him on_. His mind is swimming with visions of Doc spending day after day using his hands, methodically doctoring people up and rubbing the pads of his fingers over the edges of jigsaw pieces and sliding his palms over the steel bodies of cars he doesn’t drive anymore and holding the skulls and pulling the hair of men he’s been kissing for _fifty years_. At least. How young was he when he first kissed another guy? Lightning wants to know, as badly as he wants to know what it felt like when Doc spun out and flipped, if he was scared or accepting or regretful or hopeful or at peace.

Doc’s hand in his hair brings him back. He has no idea how long he was staring blindly at the hollow of his throat, beating his thoughts against the metronome of the pulses there. “Hey, it’s okay, kid,” Doc says, closest thing to a whisper. He’s holding Lightning’s skull, kneading strands of his hair ever so slightly, a gentle rhythm. Just the way he’s held other men he’s kissed. Lightning’s sure of it. He’s _hard_ with it. Just from looking at this old man who looks at _him_ sometimes and holds his head soothingly and tells him it’s okay to have a sexuality crisis at the age of thirty without using a single one of those words. It’s possible the _it’s okay_ means something else altogether, but Lightning can’t think outside his own feelings in this particular moment. 

So he follows the light tug of the hand Doc has stretched across the distance between them and he slides off the couch and onto the floor at the foot of Doc’s chair. He almost sobs in relief when Doc’s hand stays in its place. The warm weight of it feels like a lifeline, the only thing keeping him from withering under the dark, intense, concerned glare of Doc’s eyes. “What are you doing?” Doc asks, shaking his head the way he does when he gets caught looking. 

Lightning can’t answer that, though, because he doesn’t know. “What do you want?” he asks in return, because he’s always been good at matching what he’s doing to what Doc wants, even if it takes a little time. Doc’s eyes are scanning Lightning’s face, moving so fast it’s making Lightning dizzy through the lenses, so he reaches up and plucks the glasses from Doc’s flinching face. But even with the glasses dropped to the floor, Lightning’s still dizzy. He puts his hands on Doc’s neck, slides them up the back of his head, _feels_ him, bends him down and brings him closer. Lightning can hardly breathe, but it doesn’t feel the slightest bit like fear.

Doc’s eyes slide shut for a disorienting moment. When he opens them, they’re so heavy with blue they’re almost violet, stained with pity, either for Lightning or for himself. It’s impossible to tell. “What do _you_ want?” His voice gets trapped in his throat, sticky with that same unknown pity. Lightning wants to taste it. He wants to hear Doc’s _desire_ , the way he saw it in the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” he says, because it’s easier to say than the things he’s feeling. He draws Doc even closer, making finger-wide grooves in his hair, feeling the heat rise at the base of Doc’s neck. And _god_ it’s hot here, their breaths trapped between them. Doc’s exhales taste like they always do, worn-in like leather and grounding in a clean way, but now they’re _closer_ and hotter and real enough to choke on. Lightning wants to choke on them.

“Then stop,” Doc says, _way_ too clinical to be an honest rejection, because Lightning can _feel_ that Doc wants this, in some way at least. His breaths wouldn’t be so hot and fast if he didn’t.

“ _No_ , I’m just—” Lightning whines in his throat when Doc’s hand slips from his head. He pulls Doc in closer to make up for the loss and then their temples are touching, their cheeks brushing with every move. Lightning tries to figure out what he _wants_ so he can _ask_ for it, but maybe he has to start with Doc’s first question: _What are you doing?_ He closes his eyes against the sight of his own thumb tucked over the ridge of Doc’s ear. “I’m just feeling you,” he says, trying to take stock. “Your hair, and your bones, and… and your breath. And…” Lightning gasps when Doc moves a little, the sharp edges of his moustache dragging gently against Lightning’s jaw, burning him up inside whether or not the motion is deliberate. “And I’m… I’m imagining kissing you,” Lightning confesses to himself in the same moment he says it out loud. He can’t believe it feels so much like crying when Doc’s breath gusts out suddenly wetter against his face, like his breath was something he was trying to hold, like it has its own secrets. “And I’m getting hard. Imagining kissing you,” Lightning repeats, because it’s repeating in his brain. Just a couple of inches to the side and he could _try_ it. Could feel what the scrape of another man across his lips is like, could feel if Doc _desires_ him, could feel if _he_ desires _Doc_ , so many answers, a breath away. His lips feel numb and swollen and all he’s done is lick them and _think_.

Doc _touches_ him then, hand on his collarbone, and maybe it’s some kind of a test, but all Lightning feels is the surge of his blood to the surface, the eager stretch of his ribcage under Doc’s sure palm. “Then don’t stop,” Doc says, but it’s hoarse and sad and sounds like it _hurts_ and Lightning wants to make it _better_. He opens his eyes and shifts to press his nose to Doc’s, breathing out against Doc’s parted lips until his eyes open in their devastating flash of blue.

“I _want_ to pour you coffee every morning.” Doc’s eyes drop down, but don’t close, fixed on Lightning’s thrumming mouth like it’s a snake about to bite. “I _want_ to learn where all your stupid jigsaw puzzle pieces go.” Doc’s hand slides up, up, until it’s cupped around Lightning’s neck, thumb in the hollow of his throat like it’s a place he’s imagined kissing. Lightning’s never been kissed there before. “I want to kiss you.”

A helpless-looking smile slips onto Doc’s face. Unable to wait another second, Lightning closes his eyes and presses his mouth to the lifted corner of that self-deprecating smirk, losing his mind over the soft, dry skin under his lips and the bristle of hairs under his nose.

Before he can even breathe, Doc’s tilting into Lightning’s mouth and kissing him, short, firm, painfully sweet kisses that do crazy thing to Lightning’s gut, that bring to life nerve endings in his mouth Lightning never knew he had before. Everything tastes like Doc and it feels like he can sense with every pore that this is where he _belongs_.

While Doc guides Lightning’s hand down to press against the muscles of Doc’s back, all Lightning can focus on is the slow, thorough slide of their mouths together. When Doc slides Lightning’s other hand to the top of Doc’s shoulder, where he can make a fist in the collar of his shirt, Lightning uses the leverage to open his mouth wide around Doc’s lower lip and draw his tongue across it to taste the rawness inside. Then with the same firm, soothing touch as before, Doc slides his own hand around the back of Lightning’s skull, the way he holds the men he kisses, and he licks deep and hungry into Lightning’s mouth. And it’s there, with Doc’s tongue filling his mouth better than he ever imagined and their bodies locked together in a perfect slow dance of give-and-take, that Lightning realizes he finally is _exactly_ where he belongs.


End file.
